Word count:9781
hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this episode I'm going to be talking about the three levels of personal development work and I'm going to show you what your evolution will look like through the self-actualization path personal development work is not all the same there's a spectrum and I like to think of it as having three main levels and each of these levels you can spend years in until you move up into the next one and then the next one and it's very helpful for you no matter what stage you're at to realize that there are these levels and that personal development teachings or insights or wisdom or techniques are geared towards different people at different levels of this journey that's very important to understand because otherwise you're going to get confused because sometimes what happens is that advice or a technique that's intended for one stage of the journey is different or even contradictory to a piece of advice or technique for a lower stage of the journey right and with actualised org now I'm moving into more advanced and advanced material so I don't want you to get lost and confused by that if you're still at the lower stages so it's very important that you start to kind of classify the material listening to whether it's for me or somebody else doesn't matter along this kind of basic model that I'm going to give you so here's the model it's very simple I basically say that you've got newbies that's the first level then you've got intermediate and then you've got advanced right these are arbitrary I just made these up but I think that this model is helpful what I want to do is I want to tell you what it looks like to do personal development at the newbie stages and then at the most advanced stages and then you'll be able to figure out what the intermediate is because the intermediate is basically a mix between the newbie and the advanced is somewhere in the middle this is very very eye-opening it can be very very important because what I'm seeing more and more of as I release advanced material is that people who are following me who are still on the newbie stage they can't grasp it and in fact it makes them confused it can make them angry it can make it seem like I'm contradicting myself or like I'm I'm saying different things at different times so we're going to clear this up so let's talk about the newbie what are the characteristics of the newbie on this path well it looks something like this and this is a generalization but it looks something like this basically the nude and then the newbie is coming from a deep deficiency in his life he has holes in himself that need to be filled whether with relationships with money with business with a fitness with his mood like he's depressed or something like that right so this is where the newbie is coming from and he really needs results from this work so he's in it for the results he really just wants to feel better because he's probably feeling pretty bad with his life he's dissatisfied he might be suicidal at times he might be depressed he might be very anxious or fearful about some situation in his life and by the way when I say he of course I also mean she I just say he because still easier for me to keep in my mind when I said he and when says she so don't think that I'm leaving the ladies out of this the newbie likes to blame his environment for whatever is not right in his life so the reason that he's depressed is because of his environment something external to himself or the reason he's anxious is something external to himself and the reason he has money problems is again the environment and so because the newbie thinks that the solutions are out in the environment that's what he's looking for is he's looking for techniques and methods that will give him an external solution to these things so it's like if he feels that he's not good-looking enough he will look for an external solution to that so it's likely oh how can I make myself better looking what can I do can I get like better clothes better haircut some plastic surgery can I like use some Creemore we know what are the what are the methods for that he's not really interested in considering an internal solution to this problem that's just one example you can apply this tamati to relationships and everything else if there's a relationship problem clearly as external maybe I need a new girlfriend or I need a new husband and if there's a problem with the kids clearly external problems right so it's like the kids are not doing well enough in school or the kids are misbehaving in some way external problem how do we create an external solution well maybe I can like set some some new rules for them maybe I can ground them maybe I can take away the keys to their car or something like that also the newbie is negatively motivated the newbie is not in this work for the extraordinary feelings he could have from growing himself and from things like expanding his consciousness in his awareness or from finding his life purpose and contributing back to society in some way the newbies not interested in these things because the newbie is coming from a place of pain and he's just interested in removing the pain he's not interested in high performance he's just interested in kind of getting to baseline just to kind of be average in life the newbie is also not interested in changing his beliefs or his sense of self or identity the newbie wants a solution that avoids changing his beliefs at all or his identity he wants to maintain those so really he's not looking for inner change or inner growth at all he's just looking for things or solutions in the outer world he's not interested in examine being and perhaps tinkering with his beliefs about how happiness works or how business works or how relationships work or how depression works or how emotions work or what the self is or what reality is these things are of no interest to the newbie he just wants a solution to fix his problem in fact the idea that he would examine and he rode his sense of self this is uh this is everything the newbie is against the reason he's in personal development in the first place is to build up his sense of self that's the point in his mind the newbie is also very characteristically not interested in truth he can't even comprehend why somebody would be interested in truth for truth sake the newbie is not interested in what reality is or how reality works the newbies just interested in getting his result and if he is interested in truth it's only to the extent that it serves his sense of self and identity it's like yeah I want the truth leo but really I only want it when it confirms my existing ideas about truth because I already know I already know what the truth is there's no need to explore it and to investigate it and to question it because I already know the newbie also characteristically takes his mind way too seriously he actually thinks that his thoughts matter that his thoughts somehow correspond to truth because he has not made the critical distinction yet between thoughts and awareness he's identified with thoughts so fully that they are his reality and it never occurs to him that I'm not just saying that some of his thoughts are wrong I'm saying that everyone's thoughts the entire structure of mind could be irrelevant on this journey and that it could be a huge obstacle see the newbie is not aware of the difference between awareness and thoughts the newbie is also lost in theory and so anytime that I present some kind of piece of wisdom or advice or some insight especially if it's a deep advanced insight then he just takes it on as an idea he conceptualizes it and he doesn't understand that he's conceptualizing it and he has no alternative to that he doesn't actually ground the things that are set to him in his direct experience so there's not a distinction in the newbies mind between theory and direct experience this is very very important you have to understand other things that I teach you especially the most advanced things that they are all grounded in direct experience I don't just sit around and think up cool things to come up here and tell you I do do that but I also ground these things in direct experience and when I do research I'm always doing research as to who is grounding their ideas into direct experience these insights the most advanced insights they're all coming from direct experience and if you want to understand them it's not enough just to understand them you have to also experience it and some of these advanced things they take a lot of inner work to experience and until you've done that inner work and actually have the experience then you can't really claim that you understand it you're kidding yourself a newbie doesn't quite understand this a newbie also resists taking action for the new be listening to self-help advice is great especially when it's in video form or in audio form you can just sit back and listen to hours and hours and hours of it and it really feels like oh I'm learning cool stuff and it's kind of interesting and you know I'm agreeing with this thing there I'm disagreeing with that thing there I'm building up my model of the world is getting all all nice and rigid in there I feel like I understand everything now but of course that's an excuse from not taking action the actual idea of the newbie taking a piece of wisdom that's shared with him and then going out the next day or even the same day and starting to take action on it lots and lots of action hours of action hundreds of hours of action thousands of hours of action this idea scares him he doesn't want to contemplate it when he thinks about it his body Quivers with fear on the inside and that's a big problem because if you're listening to advanced advice and you're not taking action on it it will actually [ __ ] your growth because now you're going to have a preview of some advanced stuff that human beings have discovered but you haven't discovered and so you're going to feel very very frustrated because what you know is not going to match up to what's real for you and yet you don't want to take the action to make the alignment happen because you've got all sorts of blocks and inner resistance and of course rather than dealing with the blocks and the inner resistance which takes action instead what you do is you just cover up that problem with more information nation and more advice watch more videos watch listen to more audios read more books and that's a great way to escape from this problem taking action but at some point you're going to realize that this isn't working you have to mobilize yourself one day you have to say wait a minute I've got too much information I got to start taking action and that you know that first mobilization effort that you make is going to be very very emotionally challenging for you so you're going to try to put that off or as long as you can you might put it off for six months twelve months couple of years before it gets too painful to put it off any longer the newbie is also unaware of some very critical concepts in human psychology one of which is the ego the newbie doesn't really understand what the ego is why it's important and just how deceptive it is and how much suffering it creates in his life in fact when the newbie thinks about the ego the newbie has a totally misconceived notion of the ego and usually what it is it's like oh the ego is like some bad part of me something like that not realizing that the me calling the ego the bad part is itself the ego so the ego starts to splinter off in various ways without taking full a kind of awareness of itself the newbie is also not aware of closed mindedness the trap of closed mindedness and just how close-minded he is and how serious of an impediment this is to his growth when I talk about radical open mindedness the newbie thinks like oh yeah okay I kind of get it but it's like yeah Leo move on let's move on there's no need to talk about radical open - that's not very significant that's not an important idea let's move on to the practical stuff so the newbie hasn't realized yet just how much open-mindedness is necessary to be able to even entertain gained the most advanced pieces of wisdom even to entertain it I'm not even talking about to actually embody it successfully the newbie is also not aware of what I call the social distortion that he's under so the newbie might hear an advanced piece of knowledge or advice and then what he's going to do is he's going to compare it to his environment so he's going to look at his friends his family his teachers his school environment his professors his coworkers um he's going to look at what he's seen on TV and in the tabloids and magazines and what he knows about politics he's going to compare this piece of wisdom with all of that which is a totally different level and then he's going to discount this advanced piece of wisdom because he gonna say Ollie oh that's not realistic because look at reality my reality says that that's not possible that can't possibly work because look at all these people they're not living that way and the key assumption and mistake that the newbie makes is to think that actually society represents a healthy form of psychology as though the average human being is you know the exemplar of self-actualization which is not the case at all and even things that you were taught in history class in science class about human beings and how humanity has evolved this idea that at one point Humanity was in the dark ages and then we evolved out of that with the Renaissance and then there was the European enlightenment and now we moved into the 21st century now in the 21st century well science has pretty much mastered the universe religion has been conquered and basically we've got a good education system that teaches pretty much what's true and what's right and it's like we're in the golden ages of humanity this whole narrative the newbie doesn't recognize yet that actually right now we are in the deep dark ages humanity is in the dark as far as awareness and self-development goes the deep deep deep dark ages so you cannot look around your environment and use that as a reference point because you're going to be totally off the mark if what you care about is reaching your highest potential as a human being which is what I care about and which is what we're talking about here what self-actualization the newbie is also not aware of what spirituality is the newbie falls to two traps with spirituality one is that he completely dismisses it because he's a scientific rational atheist and spirituality is kind of fluffy nonsense so he falls into that trap or he falls into the opposite trap where he says Oh spirituality Yama I'm a super spiritual person ah you know I do all these spiritual things I love spirituality and it's kind of like this this fake phony spirituality without doing the actual work of spirituality the newbie doesn't understand yet what true spiritual work is and how radically opposite it is of his ideas about it the newbies not also interested in spiritual group the newbie tells himself that Leo I'm a very practical person all that spiritual stuff you know some people are into it I'm not into it I just want like to improve my life in very practical ways in secular ways and that's fun I got no problem with you doing that that's great do that but maybe there's also a little bit more for you to discover the newbie is also characteristically impatient he's very eager to take any shortcut he can get so if the newbie here is about a psychedelic he can take a psychedelic and have an enlightenment experience and he says well Leo why should I do all the enlightenment work you talked about why should I meditate why should I do all this hard work when I can just go take a psychedelic and all the sudden I'm enlightened now I'll just take psychedelics and there it is all done look how quick it is uh but the newbie does understand that that doesn't get him real enlightenment and that's just one example the newbie will take shortcuts anywhere he'll take shortcuts with relationships with business with health with fitness with curing his depression or anything else right so rather than working on his depression the newbie if he goes to the doctor and hears about a new pill that supposedly helps people with depression he's going to say screw all this stuff Leo says let me go take that pill much easier also what I've noticed about newbies is they want things cheap or even free so the newbie is not willing to really invest in knowledge or self-development the newbies not interested in buying books or paying for a course or taking a seminar that might cost a thousand dollars the newbies not interested in this the newbie wants the cheapest he can find the freest he can find and there's no recognition of the value of this wisdom the newbie for the newbie the idea that someone could invest thousands of dollars to learn one piece of valuable wisdom to the newbie that's that's totally out of his frame of mind and the newbie also takes this wisdom for granted when it is presented to him for free totally takes it for granted doesn't recognize the transformative power that it can have in his life because it's just treated like a like a little idea it's just an idea to him the newbie also has overly narrow focus so the newbie comes into this and it's like well Leo you know all I want to do is I just want to bang girls I want to bang a bunch of girls and I want to like run a killer business that's what I'm in this for that would be a guy or if you're a girl and you come into this you'd be like all I want is like I just want to have a nice family nice family nice relationships that's what I'm in this for or you come into this I Cleo all I care about is like curing my insomnia and my depression and that's way too narrow of a focus for personal development work you need to really broaden that broaden it out because there's so many things you're going to miss and you're not even going to be effective in that narrow focus of yours because you're going to miss a lot of really important things you're going to dismiss things like philosophy and psychology and and metaphysics and all these other things that are going to help you in that quest to achieve those specific things you want right but you need to broaden it you need to look at the historical perspective you need to be interested in history and in science and all these other things but the newbie doesn't care about these things in fact he sees them as a distraction so when I start talking about these things the newbies like olio this is just like you're off topic now you're just rambling you're just ramble you're not helping me build my business you're not helping me bang a bunch of girls you're not helping me build my my dream family because the newbie is not forward-looking he's not seeing how all these little pieces will interconnect and build a snowball effect in the end a newbie also complains about abstraction so when I present an advanced piece of wisdom that advanced piece of wisdom will probably seem abstract and not practical because the newbie doesn't know how to chunk down from the abstract to the concrete he doesn't know how to take an advanced piece of abstract wisdom and then come up with action steps that he can actually go and take in his real life to embody this abstract piece of wisdom so he will write a comment saying this is all philosophy the newbie also thinks that he knows what reality is what truth is what God is and what the self is these things for a newbie are never called into question the newbie knows these things already perfectly because after all we're living in the 21st century and science is pretty much demonstrated everything there is to know so we can just look at science and everything we were taught in school and in college and that's basically what there is we got it all figured out so the newbie is not interested in actually investigating these things from ground zero with an open mind the newbie also loves to dispute and to argue so that when I present an idea all the sudden the newbies inner skeptic comes out but this is not true proper skepticism in the way that skepticism was done in ancient Greece this is the neurotic defensive skeptic this is the skeptic that is just interested in being a good lawyer where you just kind of like lawyer your way out of any situation and you're just looking for loopholes in what the person is saying and basically you're being very literal list and all you're listening to is you're listening to the words that are coming out of my mouth and you're not actually listening to the meaning behind it and the action steps that are necessary to ground that meaning indirect experience and then how you can go out and connect all that for yourself so that you can demonstrate at first hand for yourself see the newbies on interested in that the newbie is interested in just being ideological because for the newbie it's very convenient to sit back and just do armchair philosophy and be the armchair skeptic and just look at things that are presented to him and say ah well that's not going to work and you know I read something there about this that's that's contradicting what you say and you're contradicting yourself here and you know what about what that person says that contradicts what you say Who am I to believe what if you're wrong leo all this kind of stuff so this is what I call acting ideological it's a desire to defend your beliefs more than it is a desire to go out there and embody the things you're being told and actually transform your life which is what self-development is about it's not about beliefs it's about transforming your life the newbie also is very demanding as far as scientific proof goes so the newbie loves to say well leo if what you're saying is true then provide the scientific proof I want studies and I want evidence and all this stuff back it up cite your sources otherwise how do we know you're not just making this stuff up well again it's because the newbie is not looking to prove this stuff in his own life by transforming himself he's just looking to validate ideas in his mind that's what he's really interested in the newbie also tends to have black-and-white thinking which means that when I present some advanced concept the newbie will look at that and he will take it and make a straw man out of it and totally exaggerated it into ridiculousness and then he will think that's what Leo said there's not much nuance in the newbies mind about taking some advanced idea like an idea like detachment or an idea like enlightenment or an idea like you know happiness when I present ideas like this the newbie mind isn't really interested in probing and studying this this this issue and seeing what it really is because it's a complex deep issue it just takes the things I say and just kind of runs away with it the newbie mind is also easily offended the newbie mind also tends to make the teaching about the teacher so if you're listening to some advanced teaching whether it's for me or anybody else doesn't matter who it is notice this in yourself when you make it about me see nothing I really teaches about me but a lot of people make it about me it's like Leo where your source is Leo you're being arrogant Leo you're being egotistical you know this doesn't contradict sense with something you said there it's contradictory and you know Leo what about you if you say you you know I should be unconditionally happy what about you leo show me your life and unless your life is perfect and eventually happy then I'm not going to do what you say this is a classical defense that the newbie makes is projecting his own insecurities and and issues on the teacher because that means the newbie doesn't have to go inside and actually to do the hard inner emotional work because any advanced person development teaching will force you inside the depths of your mind to examine and look at things that you really don't want to examine and you really don't want to look at and so of course rather than doing that the easiest thing to do is criticism the things I talk about I'm not the master of many of these things I don't need to be though you know all I need to do is make sure that I'm working towards it myself which I am I work on it every single day in my life on these things and my intention is to embody and to move closer and closer to mastery on all these issues that I talk about um and hopefully you're doing the same thing and also sometimes I see newbies have a hard time understanding how it is I know that they are newbies and they get kind of offended by this when I call them newbies or what I call them ignorant because the problem here is that you don't know what you don't know right so the newbie things like well leo how can you know me you don't know me leo so how can you say these things about me but see just the way that you frame your questions by the questions you ask any questions you ask and the emotions behind them even the words that you use even the amount of times that you say I or me uh someone who's further along the path than you can clearly see your level of awareness how high or how low it is right it's extremely obvious once you moved through some of these levels and you're getting more towards the advanced level but if you're a newbie you don't know any of this so to you it seems like people are just like pretending like they know you or something like that in fact the person doesn't know you but the person knows the level that you're at right and he knows that you can't really escape the level that you're at the level kind of defines you and since he's already been through the level he knows the traps of that level he knows them intimately so he can point them out to you but of course is a newbie you don't like that being pointed out to you so what you're going to do is you're going to project back onto the teacher and the last characteristic of the newbies that he falls into this trap of simplicity as I call it now this is a very deep idea let me explain it this is this is really cool the trap of simplicity so see when I say that there's like a newbie stage in your media stage and advanced stage right a newbie here is this and things like oh yeah there is an advanced stage I will give you that I'll acknowledge that there probably is one but my ideas about it are that um it's very complex stuff to the newbie the levels are marked by degrees of complexity so you think that the most advanced stuff is the most complex stuff it's like calculus you know calculus is hard to do it's very advanced you got to sit down and kind of go in there is highly technical in all this and some advanced ideas are like that but a lot of the deepest most advanced wisdom is extremely simple it's so simple in fact that your mind will tend to overlook it and to dismiss it and to not take action on it which is one of the biggest mistakes of the newbie banks right he underestimates this and he thinks that when I present some advanced truth it's likely oh this is not advanced it sounds so simple it sounds stupid it sounds like childish it's childish the ice cream truck is back again I had it in my last episode and here it is again can hear ice cream truck alright so so yeah that's kind of the trap of simplicity because to the mind you know the the easiest way for the mind to trick itself is to is simply to hear something and then just to say oh yeah I already know that I already got that figured out yeah let's move on let's move on to the real stuff that's what tends to happen so in practice the newbie is incapable of grasping the deepest wisdom that is available society in general is at a stage in its evolution that it is incapable of grasping or handling the deepest wisdom that the wisest human beings have discovered we're not at that stage yet which is why I said we're in the dark ages and what's even worse is that society doesn't understand this and the newbie doesn't understand it the newbie doesn't know that he's incapable of grasping the deepest truth and this is not merely a matter of willpower so if you're at the newbie stage I'm not just saying you can will your way into understanding the deepest truths the fact is that you can't the only thing you can do is you can grow yourself you can take the action steps that I proposed to you throughout my content you can do that you can do the deep inner work to move yourself up into the intermediate stage and then into the advanced stage and then as your awareness grows you'll be able to tolerate and utilize the deepest truths of mankind but right now you may be at a stage in your life where you can't do that the newbie hasn't experienced yet the shock of how little he knows the newbie thinks he knows a lot and the newbie thinks that as he moves up these levels he's just going to know more and more and more and more and just going to be a gradual series of you know more and more stuff being added to his mind the newbie doesn't realize yet that a lot of the work to get to the advanced stages is subtractive it's removing stuff from your mind which is a lot more difficult than adding stuff to your mind and one day will have to come the shock of just how little you know just how much you thought you knew isn't true that can be shocking that can be emotionally horrifying to some people and it really progressed progress up to the most advanced and deepest levels a lot of people advanced from newbie to intermediate but they don't make the leap from intermediate to advanced because they can't handle the switch that has to happen when you move from intermediate to advanced it's no longer accumulation it's no longer more success and more of the same it's often going backwards in the opposite direction and that feels very confusing and scary and so you don't touch it with a ten-foot pole so what characterizes advanced work let's talk about that firstly it's radical open mindedness open mind is so radical that I can present you with ideas like there is no such thing as time there is no such thing as space maybe the universe doesn't exist maybe you don't exist maybe history isn't what you think it is human history okay um a lot of things like that which the normal mind can't seriously comprehend or if it does comprehend then it comprehends it is source some sort of a fantasy type of thing like a conspiracy theory or something like that which is not what I'm talking about I'm talking about radical open-mindedness but also at the same time being grounded in reality so you're not just making [ __ ] up like oh maybe we're all living in the matrix that's not what I'm saying that would be another extreme that the newbie goes to so it's it's really radical up in - or the idea where I mean the point where you can take an idea and entertain it honestly without criticism and harsh judgment of it you can actually work on the idea in your life you can take action on it to see whether it has merit or not even if the idea sounds crazy or ridiculous to you or impossible can you do that an advanced student can also an advanced student rejects all social norms so the things that society tells him to do what his friends are doing you know the idea that he has to get married or he has to get a job or he has to live a certain way you just reject all that stuff another characteristic of advanced work of these me a student is he does a lot of practice and implementation practice practice practice he really implements the theory he takes massive action and that action is not primarily aimed outwards but inwards so it's massive action meditating contemplating doing shadow work introspecting doing self inquiry you know like digging digging digging deep inside and that's basically thousands of hours of sitting alone by yourself on your couch something like that it's just like you and all your inner demons and you're facing your inner demons the newbie almost never does that which is why he doesn't really get good growth an advanced student also accepts that every problem is created by them there's no shirking responsibility and pointing fingers and looking for problems out there the problems are all inside me and as an advanced student I'm always looking for the for the triggers inside me creating every single problem I have in my life for the main student there's also a focus on truth versus goals so I'm not in to this work for achieving goals like getting more money or getting a great relationships the the advanced student is in it for truth really he's after reality like he wants to know what reality is for real through direct experience not through hearsay not through ideas not through beliefs not through ideologies but through direct experience he wants to embody it he wants to embody what is true for its own sake not as some little trick to achieve his little petty goal of having more sex or having a better marriage or something like that advanced students also focus on awareness so primarily their work goes into increasing their awareness because they recognize that thoughts and the mind is not going to get them the really deep growth that they want and if after that's holding them back so also the advanced student rejects the mind there's a rejection of mind it's like the stuff that the mind comes up with he just throws it away it's like it's not important it's not important let me just focus on awareness it's not important what my mind is coming up with because I've been living with the mind the whole lot my whole life and mostly is God means a lot of trouble what I need to do now as an advanced student is to let go of the mind and that's a tricky thing to do also in my book at least I think the advance student needs to have at least a couple of years of meditation under his belt because if you don't have a couple of years of meditation or self inquiry under your belt you really have no experience no direct experience with advanced work and I'm not saying that meditation is the only form of advanced work there's lots of different forms of advanced work and I'll share those with you in the future as I've already done in the past but I find that after about two years of daily daily meditation practice you finally start to have some insights and epiphanies about the power of awareness versus the mind or thoughts and at that point you finally open yourself up you have enough direct experience that now finally you can start to take seriously some of the advanced things that are being taught to you and since most people do not have two years of daily meditation under their belt um some of the things I share with you simply fall on deaf ears again it's not a matter of willpower it's a matter of real inner development also advanced work involves self inquiry and questioning of the ego that's that's really the core the core of advanced work if you want to know like Leo what the hell is this advanced work you're making it sound very mysterious no it's not mysterious at all you're basically just questioning who you are what you are and why you're motivated to do the things you do why you create every single emotion that you have believe it or not you do create every emotion you have and why do you create them including every single negative emotion you have why do you feel the need to create them questioning that looking really deeply into it also the advanced student rejects success and the need to meet his needs he's not in this for success anymore he's seen that success is hollow he recognized he's had the Epiphany that success will never get him to where he wants to be in life now that doesn't mean he stopped going to work and then he has now become a monk it doesn't mean that he still pursues relative degrees of success but he no longer subscribes to the newbie ideal that success is like the end-all be-all and if I just get the success I want then I can just retire on some tropical island in the Bahamas and life will be peachy he's seen through that illusion for real and he no longer really takes the meeting of his needs to seriously maybe he doesn't have the ideal relationship he wants maybe he's single right now let's say but he really wants a girlfriend but uh it's not the most burning thing on his mind there's bigger fish to fry or maybe he's not earning as much money as he wants yeah okay he could go pursue more money but again he sees that that's not really get him gonna get him where he wants to be there's bigger fish to fry which does not mean he doesn't pursue money at some point and it doesn't mean he never gets a girlfriend it's just that his priorities are different also the advanced student has made this a lifelong commitment personal development has become a lifelong commitment it's done now for its own sake he wants to grow he's actually interested in transforming himself he doesn't want surface-level solutions and as a consequence of this he becomes quite patient with the process his expectations come into line they become more realistic he's not after an immediate result he's looking far down the road five ten years down the road what all this work will produce for him and he's excited about that also the advance student makes serious study of personal development material not just personal development area l-- not just psychology not just the techniques that will help him with specific problems in his life but a broader study he studies philosophy he studies uh history you know he studies religion he studies spirituality he studies science he studies logic he studies epistemology like these kind of fields that normally a newbie would never want to touch because they would seem too irrelevant but to the advanced student all of that just enriches his model of reality and all of that gives him inspiration and gives some valuable wisdom and insights for how to guide his life to where he wants to go an advanced student is able to cope with simplicity problem he's able to take very simple advice and really work hard to implement that and to chunk it down he has the ability to chunk down simple and abstract ideas and actually create an action plan that he can then follow for months and for years to embody that simplicity in abstractness in himself the advanced student is aware that the deepest work is the most emotionally challenging work and so he's bitten the bullet of putting in the emotional labor and he no longer runs away from it and in fact when he has the most emotionally challenging days um he's excited about that even though he's suffering through it he's still kind of in the back of his mind also excited by the fact that you know all this emotional pain is experiencing is actually purifying him and moving him exactly in the right direction that's a sign of progress whereas to a newbie this emotional pain it's a sign of his failure in his mind he thinks failing a newbie thinks that when he's sitting there and meditating and his mind is going nuts into crazy monkey mind mode he thinks he's failing whereas the advanced student says oh my god this is this is this is the best opportunity for growth that I've had all month the advanced student is really open to questioning his web of beliefs and not just on the periphery but at the very very core he is willing to question his beliefs about reality life death humanity morality politics science religion spirituality the self all this stuff is open to questioning and in fact there's a sort of excitement about changing your web of beliefs because the the advanced student already recognizes that his web of beliefs is is holding him back so much whereas the newbie doesn't recognize that yet to the newbie his what beliefs is something that he needs to protect and defend and lastly I would say that the advanced student is ok with confusion and paradox when the newbie hears something confusing or paradoxical or contradictory he uses that as an excuse to reject it and certainly will never take action on it he uses it to psych himself out when the advanced student hears something confusing or paradoxical actually what he does is he sits with the confusion he sits with the paradox he's able to hold it and not let it get to him and in fact he finds a sort of like twisted pleasure in the paradoxes of personal development these things are actually quite delicious they're intellectually delicious if you have developed a certain taste for them but that's an acquired taste that you only develop when you pass through the intermediate stages so uh that's about it those are the two characters ages I have for you the newbie and the advanced student now you know what they are now of course the reality is that you know you are probably somewhere in the middle probably somewhere intermediate or closer to the newbie stage very very few people get up to advanced and that's fine there's no problem with being a newbie I'm not saying being a newbie is bad or it's awful or that I'm condemning you for it I just want to kind of make you aware of where you're at and also to make you aware of where you're going and what that's going to look like so that you can kind of just kind of orient yourself and have the right expectations and also maybe recognize some of the traps that you're falling into as a newbie so let me give you some advice specifically for newbies it's okay to be a newbie if you're a newbie focus on satisfying your deepest needs first that's probably what you want to do so when I shoot a video that tells you to detach from everything and you know go live in the woods and focus on enlightenment that's probably not going to jive with you not that you couldn't do that but that you're probably not mature enough to handle that so for you pursue some success get some basic success in your life if you've never had success in your life if you're a guy who's never had sex and you're like 30 years old then you probably want to go fix that problem rather than go living in the woods and you know if you're a woman who's just been getting into abusive relationship after abusive relationship for years well you probably want to work on that so that you can have at least one nice relationship before you start considering my advanced ideas about enlightenment and stuff right so yeah go create some tangible success for yourself that's fine try to burn through some of the needs you have if you have these deep needs you have elite need for love and need for approval I need to look good I need to be sexy I need to have lots of friends you know or I need to have lots of money burn through that if you can just do it in a way where you don't carried away with it and you don't get lost and come on back once you've done fulfilling those a bit also focus on installing habits a newbie cannot practice some of the advanced stuff that I say because he hasn't put into place the right habits very basic stuff a meditation habit and exercise habit a cleaning a clean eating habit a study habit a self inquiry habit you know a meditator talked about meditation like a contemplation habit a visualization habit and affirmation have you know just like very basic things that I talked about put those into place cut out some of the distractions and addictions in your life like TV and social media and internet and porn and some of this other stuff videogames so you just you have some room to implement the more advanced things you'll hear also be careful with advanced topics I'll try to point out to you in the future when I do an advanced topic that it's an advanced topic and what that should tell you in your mind is oh this is an advanced topic maybe this isn't something I need to focus on implementing right now I could listen to it and maybe all learn a few things I'll get a preview of where I'm headed and that's great that preview is important but let me focus on just you know building my business or fixing my relationship or curing my depression something a little bit more basic like that and then I'll come back to this and if you want skip the advanced videos altogether also be much more open-minded especially when you're listening to advanced topics recognize that if you're at the lower stages and you're listening to some advanced stuff it might sound crazy to you it might sound ridiculous to you don't be so fast to jump to conclusions to criticize to label to judge just recognize that your mind is doing those these things right and there's a reason it's doing these things also realize that this is a very deep path personal development is a super deep path it's really a path that takes from birth to death this is life right here this is we're talking about how to become fully human you see there are people alive who have spent 40 60 80 years of their life doing this I'm not kidding in extremely hardcore ways I don't mean one hour a day I mean like 12 hours a day there are people like that right and it's these people who come up with the deepest wisdom so if you want to comprehend that deepest wisdom well don't expect to be able to do that just as a newbie and get excited about the advanced work the reason I like to talk about advanced work in the midst of also talking about newbie work is because what I find is that really you need both why is that because as a newbie if all you're working towards is fixing newbie problems that's not very inspiring it's the advanced stuff that should inspire you so I talked about advanced stuff like enlightenment and other ideas like this because hopefully it gives you like some real hope to work towards so that if you're depressed right now not only are you going to cure your depression but you're going to move to something very very positive after that it's not very inspired to just fix your depression and then you're just like normal that's not very inspiring also because just because you're doing advanced work don't think that there's not some newbie areas in your life where you will need newbie advice on right so I know people who are [ __ ] enlightened they're enlightened but they don't know jack-shit about business so for them they just need newbie advice about business even though they're enlightened and you know the same thing to go with relationships you could be enlightened and not know anything about relationships so you're going to need some advice about relationships or how to have sex or you know how to go lift weight at the gym so in practice you know it's helpful to have all sorts of level of advice and I don't want to just limit my advice to the most esoteric you know mystical advice that you can get I love that stuff and I'll be talking more about that stuff in the future but I like regular advice too and in fact I like the juxtaposition of both you know I like to screw with your mind I like to release a video about enlightenment and then the very next week I'll release a video about how to have amazing sex or something like that I love that because I know that people watching the Enlightenment video will think to themselves oh my god Leo you talked about enlightenment that was amazing and now you're talking about sex sex is so stupid like why are you contradicting yourself ah but see that's not actually an advanced mindset the advanced mindset recognized that there's no problem and to feel contradiction between talking about enlightenment and then talking about sex there's nothing wrong with pursuing enlightenment and also learning how to have great sex so when I release videos like that in that kind of order it's actually to kind of [ __ ] with your mind and to break your expectations because a lot of people when they talk hear me talk about enlightenment then all the sudden they think okay so if it means I'm pursuing enlightenment that means no more school no more work no more business no more money no more food no more sex none of that and no not at all I never said that yes be detached from all those things but being detached does not mean that you don't partake in them not only do not partake in them but it doesn't mean you don't master them go master sex become a [ __ ] sex God no problem with that as long as you're not using that as an excuse from realizing your true nature and mastering all the or demons that you have see the problems usually with sex is that you get lost in sex and then you never address your inner demons or you get lost in a marriage and you never address your inner demons and that's why your sex goes bad eventually and your marriage goes bad eventually and your business goes bad eventually so the addressing of the inner demons is important and in fact what it does is it frees you up to then live whatever kind of life you want and I don't you know I'm not even though I do talk about sometimes living in a box as a as a hypothetical I'm not suggesting you live your life in a cave or in a box go out there and enjoy what life has to offer just do it in a very conscious way do it in a way where you can really enjoy it rather than the way that most people do it which is that they have amazing things around them and yet they still can't enjoy them because they haven't mastered their mind so yeah get excited about advance work in fact my uh my newest material I'm gonna be talking about is going to be some very advanced stuff you know in a few years the [ __ ] I'm gonna be talking about is going to seem preposterous and ridiculous to you unless you actually grow with me are you noticing that I'm growing my advice is changing every week I'm growing stuff I've talked about a year ago is no longer relevant to me or I've outgrown that stuff or there's new insights about it right and that will continue to happen because this is a very long and very deep path so um take action do the homework that you're supposed to be doing here if you do the homework and you take action then when I talk about the advance stuff you can actually comprehend it and it will give you incredible value and incredible joy rather than the way it is currently for some people where it's like I talked about advance stuff and it only pisses them off and it it makes them question their life and question me and question everything and throw it all away and go back to their miserable existence that's not what I want I want you to grow with me on this path I want you to be inspired by the possibility that exists for transforming yourself as a human being and what you can grow into so one of the things that I'm doing with actualize that org is not only just showing you techniques but I'm showing you what's possible by doing it myself so the things I talk about I actually do and I expect you to do them too otherwise you will not understand them and man the deepest wisdom is so incredibly joyous and in just amazing to understand to grasp the deepest wisdom that's possible for a human being that's that's such a remarkable experience that um that's what this whole thing is about that's what I want you to get to to grow to that I don't want you to miss out on that stuff so you have some homework to do all right that's it I'm signing off don't forget to click the like button for me please share this with a friend and post your comments down below I do read virtually all the comments try to respond to all intelligent comments too if you're listening to this on iTunes then go ahead and leave me a review on iTunes and a star rating and lastly come check out actualize writing right here this is my website and my newsletter there's a forum on there you can go participate that's cool there's a some course there's a book list check all that out sign up to my newsletter stay on track with this I'm going to be talking about mind blowing mind blowing beautiful profound concepts that are also highly practical that will totally transform your life in the weeks and months to come so make sure you stick around for that and keep doing your homework alright see you soon with more you